The Smell of Paper and Time.

After many years, life forced me to travel far away again.

The city moved past the bus window in its usual hurry until suddenly I saw them.

Book stalls.

Books on carts.

Old books.

New books.

And for a moment, time folded.

I was no longer travelling through the city.

I was travelling through my own life.

Back to the government library beside my medical college.

Back to the local library.

Back to shelves that felt larger than kingdoms.

Back to librarians who silently guarded entire universes and somehow remembered every reader who walked through their doors.

I still remember faces.

I still remember corners of rooms and the creaky wooden floor!

An occasional visit from Maina on the sunlit windowsill…

I still remember the feeling of carrying books home as though carrying treasure.

Adventures were waiting patiently on those shelves.

The Famous Five were preparing another expedition.

There were hidden passages to discover, islands to explore, and mysteries waiting for curious minds.

There was always ginger beer.

There were always buns.

My God, how I wanted to learn to make ginger beer and buns exactly like theirs.

The picnics in those books tasted better than real picnics.

The adventures felt more real than reality itself.

I remember reading book after book after book.

Returning one and carrying three back home.

I remember the librarians.

I remember the silence.

I remember the smell.

Paper.

Dust.

Ink.

Time.

Perhaps readers never really leave those libraries.

Part of them remains there forever, somewhere between the shelves, waiting patiently beside pages carrying the smell of paper and time.

And perhaps that is why, many years later, a glimpse of books on roadside carts can suddenly make a grown adult miss a librarian’s smile, an old library card and the impossible dream of making ginger beer exactly like the Famous Five.

Some journeys begin with train tickets.

Some begin with bus rides.

Some begin with old books quietly waiting on a cart by the roadside.

And some journeys never really end at all.